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Go out and have an average day!

Most folks like to say “Have a Grrreat day!” in true Tony Tiger fashion.

This is where I plan to spend the day, rocking and reading my new James Patterson novel. Sounds pretty grrreat to me, though most would call it “average.”

The enemy of happiness is what some wise sage has dubbed “the curse of exceptionality”, our incessant desire to celebrate a string of exceptional days.

In a world where everyone is trying to be exceptional, two things happen. The first is that nearly everyone fails, because by definition if too many people become exceptional, the exceptional becomes commonplace.

The second is that those few who do succeed feel even more isolated and estranged from their peers than before.

Consequently you have a few people feeling envied, misunderstood and alone and tens of thousands of others feeling like failures for not being “good enough”, “special enough”, “rich enough” or even “happy enough.”

When you think about it, the paradoxical promise of the “average day” philosophy – the cumulative effect of a series of average days spent doing an average amount of what one loves and wants to do is actually quite extraordinary!

When we combine those two ideas we have what may well be the ultimate goal for a happy and productive life:

To be an average, happy person making a bit of a positive difference and having a happy, average day.

In doing this, you create the kind of “exceptionality” that can be shared by everyone.